Quotes on Ideas

Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They’re able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.

When you have a few cake formulas and filling ideas in your repertoire, you will find that it's pretty much an assembly job - you can mix and match a different way every time.

I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now.

You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas... when you actually do something physical.

Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.

People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you've gotten some approval for them. Then it's too late! Follow your gut. That's hard to do, but the only way to be original.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

The ideas of control and improvements are often confused with one another. This is because quality control and quality improvement are inseparable.

Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being; your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.

Nobody can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or María, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, of Chiles and Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name.

Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups.

Listen, you know this: If there's not a rebellious youth culture, there's no culture at all. It's absolutely essential. It is the future. This is what we're supposed to do as a species, is advance ideas.

Just as it is important in Latin America to discuss ideas that come from North America, I think it is interesting for North Americans to discuss ideas that come from Latin America or Africa and do not insert themselves into capitalist interests.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

It is the power of words and books - explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals - that is the greatest weapon in the missionary's arsenal.